


These Days

by gothboss



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Love Triangles, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-23
Updated: 2015-12-13
Packaged: 2018-05-03 00:41:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,112
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5270102
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gothboss/pseuds/gothboss
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After witnessing a horrible accident at work, John returns home a very different man. A foundation of twenty years is shaken to its very core.</p><p>A domestic-ish AU set in an average Midwestern town in 1984.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Decades

**Author's Note:**

> Posted from my phone so the formatting is a bit off and there are no indentations, so thank you for bearing with me! Let me know what you think and follow my tumblr for updates: Shalashasknya.tumblr.com

* * *

It was 11:37 PM and the stale popcorn was beginning to squish like Styrofoam between his back teeth. Another late night.

Patient still, Adam mindlessly shoveled it into his mouth by the handful. Always a late night.

He sighed deeply and got up off of the couch, stooping over a bit to turn down the volume on the television.

John Wayne mouthed something heroic between the scanlines he'd probably had memorized, but his mind was too tired and foggy for nostalgia. His fingers brushed the pause button on the VCR and for a moment he wished he could fast-forward through the night, too.

In theory, more hours were great. Fantastic, even. They were still just barely scraping by on what little Adam made at his little gig at the dealership- if it could even be called that, of course. The place was a bit of a shithole, but he managed to sell many a polished turd by the grace of his silver tongue alone. Making commission was a liar's game and he had the upper hand.

Still, it wasn't nearly enough to support them on its own- comfortably, at least. The apartment wasn't exactly some high-class real estate, but they had what they needed. One Christmas, Adam even stashed away a few hundred to buy one of those new microwave things. He was still somewhat apprehensive about cooking a whole turkey in it, though. It would probably be another decade or so before his friends back home even knew what one was.

He perked up at the sound of keys jostling outside the door. It opened with a slow, cautious creak and a one-eyed, bearded face peeked around the corner.

"You still up?"

Adam jolted upright and looked over his shoulder, flashing a tired smile.

"Unfortunately," he said wryly.

With a gruff expression, John stepped inside and locked the door behind him. He slipped off his reflective vest and hung it along with his hard hat and other gear on the coat-rack. It wasn't much of a coat-rack so much as a couple of pegs stuck into a polished plank of wood, but it did its job.

"Sorry. Figured you were asleep and didn't want to make too much noise," the man grumbled, drowsily rubbing his dirty face with his palm. "Didn't mean to keep you waiting."

Adam nodded and made his way to the coffee table, returning to John's side with an unlit cigar and a lighter in hand. It was beginning to become a sort of ritual, he thought to himself as he placed the cigar between John's lips and flicked the lighter.

"Miller, I'm assuming?" he asked, pulling himself away towards the kitchen to go pour the other man something to drink. John grunted in response and plopped down on the couch, cigar in one hand and his face buried in the other.

"Same as always. He's really fuckin' good at making something that should only take a week last a whole month with all the regulation horseshit." John's voice was muffled from behind his palm, but the resentment in his voice was clear as day. "This 'safety first' garbage isn't going to get this building done on time. The longer we take, the longer we've gotta rent everything." He took a long drag on his cigar and exhaled into the stale air above him.

Despite being the foreman, John seemed to have very little say in how things ran at job sites. Miller ruled over every little movement with a cheap, iron fist.

"That's costing you guys more in the long run, isn't it?" Adam asked with a comforting tone, unscrewing the cap on a dusty bottle of Old Crow. He poured it slowly into a glass half filled with ice and smudged with fingerprints, then set it down next to the popcorn bowl from earlier. So much for that.

"He's some yuppie, probably about your age. Maybe even younger. Doesn't know a damn thing about money that isn't his."

Adam's face flushed a bit in embarrassment, but he brushed it off. There want any reason to take it personally. Probably.

"I see," he murmured, watching the other man puff on his cigar between long sips of bourbon. Despite not being much older than himself, John's face was weathered. It came with the territory of working in construction, but it did pain him to think about how fresh his face had looked when he was just an apprentice. Years had gone by since then and while he did age well, the rough skin and the eyepatch made him look a bit intimidating to some.

Adam, however, was only just beginning to show his age and for that he was quite thankful.

Tentatively, he sat on the other end of the small couch and rested his cheek on his palm, staring straight ahead at the muted television. The credits were already rolling which had meant it had to have been at least an hour since he last checked the clock.

"Not that it necessarily has anything to do with age," John continued, glancing over at the other man in reassurance. "You can be as much of a jackass at thirty-something as you can at eighty. I'm just- I'm venting, I guess. Sorry."

"You're allowed to vent, you know. Have you tried actually confronting him about it?"

John visibly stiffened and drew his eyebrows together in thought, his one visible eye shifting from Adam, to the carpet, then to Adam again. His cigar had gone out at least a minute ago, yet he still held it between his teeth.

"Well, he doesn't listen to a damn thing I say anyway-"

"So you haven't is what you're saying?"

"No, listen. He won't-"

Adam gave an exasperated sigh and tugged gently at the other man's arm, trying to pull him down into his lap.

It took a little coaxing, but John's head landed with a soft thud between his thighs. His eyes went wide with surprise and mild confusion, looking not unlike a deer in headlights.

"It's almost one in the morning," Adam said softly, brushing a bit of dark brown hair from his face. "I said you can vent, but maybe save it for tomorrow."

"Gonna give that Miller a piece of my mind," John grumbled. He seemed almost unaware of his current position as he continued to huff. "First thing in the morning when I come in. He may call me 'boss', but I don't think he knows what that word means."

The man above him smiled and stroked his cheek. He couldn't remember just how long it had been since the two had last shared any sort of physical affection- even something as chaste as that. As they grew older, any sort of intimacy had slowed down to a crawl, mainly due to their schedules. He'd almost forgotten how nice it felt to just be close.

In their younger days, the two were a bit more wild. From Adam sneaking out of his dorm without alerting his roommates to spend a night with John at a nearby seedy motel in the sixties, to fogging up the windows of John's Bronco on road trips in the seventies, eventually work became harder and days grew shorter. Sex became a thing of the past.

However, it made moments like those so much more precious. Getting that close to John was a rarity in of itself those days and he was going to enjoy every second of it- despite all the man's tired complaints.

The man he loved was nestled in his lap, fighting off sleep and babbling on about his battle plan for work the following day. It was worth watching Rio Grande a second time that night just to stay up long enough to welcome him home.

After a few minutes of mumbling, John's plan of attack turned into quiet snores. Adam was beginning to nod off himself, despite all his efforts to watch the other man sleep in the peace he deserved. He lazily ran his fingers through John's hair one last time before letting his eyelids fall shut, leaning his head back into the couch.

The phone began to ring, but he was too comfortable to move. The answering machine could deal with it in the morning.


	2. From Safety to Where

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry this took so long! Weird formatting because phone etc etc

Adam awoke with a start in his own bed.

He was fairly certain they had fallen asleep on the couch. At some point John must have carried him back into their bedroom. Had he not been so groggy, he may have even blushed.

He yawned heavily and sat upright, rubbing the crust out of his eyes. They burned a bit as he opened them, so he blinked a few times until the pain subsided. John was nowhere to be found. He'd most likely left for work already. His job required him to be at whatever site he was working on much, much earlier than Adam's. For that he was also quite thankful as sleeping into the afternoon was more his forte.

“John?” he called out- just in case. No response. As expected.

Slowly, he pried himself from the cozy nest of pillows and comforters to join the living once more. His eyes drifted towards the alarm clock on the messy end table. He had an hour or so until he had to leave for his own job. With a sigh, he ran his hands down his face.

The monotony of it all was a real killer.

Adam made his way back to the living room and stood above the answering machine. The light alerting of a new message blinked steadily and his finger hovered over the play button.

Some sort of anxiety twisted his gut in knots. Lately, every message they'd received had been a negative one. There was some sort of Pavlovian response in seeing the light blink, sending his insides through a meat grinder. He began to wish he'd never bought the stupid thing. New technology seemed to do more harm than good.

Regardless, he played the recordings. John's voice boomed out of the little speaker with a tinny echo.

“You've reached the residence of, uh- John and Adam. I'm- We're not here to take your call at the moment, so leave a message.”

How nobody had assumed they were lovers after living together for almost fifteen years was beyond him. For some reason, two middle-aged men sharing a small apartment didn't arouse suspicion. Not that he was complaining, of course. The machined rattled off a phone number and a time before the first message began to play.

“John. It's me, Eva. Eli and David are-”

Letting out a long, drawn out “nope”, he sneered and immediately deleted it before it could continue all the way through.

“Message erased.”

Dealing with John's ex-wife and that little hell spawn Eli was not on his itinerary for the day. No amount of “Uncle Adams” would make him hate the kid any less. His brother David, however, was a pretty decent kid. Too bad they were a package deal. Another phone number and time spewed out of the machine and the final message began.

“It's Kaz. Gonna need you in a couple hours early this morning. Shoot for 4 AM instead of 6. See you then.”

His sneer quickly turned into a scowl. Had he answered the phone the previous night, John would have only been able to sleep for a few meager hours after being sent home so terribly late. Hopefully being a bit behind schedule didn't get him in too much trouble with Miller.

What a real piece of work, Adam thought. If John was still being too big of a chickenshit to stand up for himself, Adam would most likely just have to do it in his stead.

That wasn't on his itinerary for the day, either.

After his morning ritual of breakfast, a shower, and lazy grooming, he pulled on his cheap sportcoat with those elbow pads he at first despised, but John seemed to quite like- and headed out the door for work. It was time to empty some pockets again.

\- - -

 

“Kaz!”

John nearly kicked open the door to his tiny on-site trailer, but instead opted to shove it open as noisily as he could. A visibly confused Kazuhira looked up from his doughnut and coffee cup as John’s angry voice rose just a bit in volume.

Since having been assigned to the same project, Kaz was very quick to undermine his authority and overstep boundaries for the sake of saving a dollar or two. As he was more suited for clerical work and accounting, it especially angered John to see him calling the shots from his little “office” with his feet kicked up on the desk.

“You’re late, boss!” he chirped, absentmindedly licking off a bit of chocolate frosting and sprinkles he had smeared on the tip of his thumb. Though his aviators hid his eyes, John could still detect the slightest hint of smugness on the rest of his face.

“Where the hell is everyone? We had twenty guys working yesterday, and I can hardly count what we’ve got left on two hands,” John said, holding up eight fingers to prove his point.

“Well, since I got tired of waiting for your approval on sending some of our men home, I went ahead and did it myself.”

It was then John’s turn to be confused.

“What are you talking abou-“

“Had you picked up the phone when I called you last night, you would have known to come in early this morning so we could chat about it.” Kaz paused for a moment, held one finger up in the air, and took another bite from his doughnut before continuing. “Everyone here knows what they’re doing, so I decided to cut off some of the dead weight. It’s more cost-effective and efficient this way.”

“You can’t just do that without asking me first!”

“Come in early next time.”

He stood up from behind the desk and walked past John, nudging the door open and splaying his palm out in front of him. “See, check it out.”

As much as he hated to admit it, Kaz was right.

The construction site seemed so much less chaotic with less layabouts sitting around. Everyone looked as though they were in their place as opposed to just being bunched up together to do a one person job.

However, the man assigned to the crane operation seemed a bit uneasy. He lifted up a steel beam from one end of the yard and placed it on the other. Even from the distance between his position and the trailer, John could see the worry on his face.

“What about that guy?” he asked, pointing to the crane.

“Huh? Oh, him. I gave him some brief training off the clock earlier. He has certification to operate the crane, so protocol is still being followed,” Kaz explained, finishing off the rest of his breakfast. “More than enough to ensure everything goes smoothly. Anyway, there’s a cruller left. Do you want it or is it cool if I eat it?”

Silently, John shook his head. Something about it didn’t seem quite right. He watched Kaz step back into the open door of the trailer to fish around in a carry-out box on his desk. He pulled out a particularly large cruller and took a bite.

“How do you know he’s not just bullshitting?” John crossed his arms over his chest, watching Kaz eat.

“You know me, Boss. I wouldn’t break safety regulations just to let some jackass fiddle around on a huge, expensive piece of machinery like that. Speaking of which-” He picked up a clipboard and motioned for John with doughnut to follow him outside. “Routine safety check. Come with me.”

They visited each worker and surveyed the area as Kaz marked things off his checklist and took notes. Everyone seemed to be pretty confident and had nothing but good news. It made John feel just a tiny bit better about the situation, but not by much.

The two stopped at a man who was in the process of mixing concrete into two wheelbarrows. A few yards away, the nervous crane operator was moving pipes.

“Don’t we have a machine for that?” John asked, watching the man dump the bags of dry powder one after the other. Clouds of dust obscured his vision, and he struggled to squint at Kaz.

“It was starting to get a bit expensive to keep renting it. We don’t need machines if we’ve got men.” Flipping a page, Kaz scribbled something hastily down on his clipboard.

The urge to roll his eye was strong, but John resisted.

Once the cement particles settled, John barely had time to register the ten foot long steel pipe swinging in their direction.

“Kaz! Get down!” he shouted, instinctively squatting close to the ground so the pipe would soar overhead.

He was a second too late.


	3. Something Must Break

Kaz looked up from his work and was suddenly pummeled by the giant piece of metal. 

It was almost like some sort of horrible, lucid dream. Time stood still and blasted ahead before either of the men had time to register just what exactly was unfolding. 

John reached out his hand feebly, feeling as though his fingers stretched out through oozing molasses.

In horror, he watched as the man’s body flew forward a few feet like a ragdoll into a huge pile of bricks and tools. The pipe released from between the crane’s jaws and pinned him underneath. 

“Kaz!” John bellowed, shoving the worker pouring concrete out of his way. He dropped down to a squat and began to desperately pry at the metal that trapped Kaz’s battered body. One of his arms hung limp at a terribly unnatural angle from beneath the steel, making John’s stomach turn at the sight of it.

Since Kaz was put on the job, workplace accidents became a rarity; they were hardly more than scratches and sprains caused by the workers’ own incompetence. Never before had John seen anything so dire. Not since his own accident, anyway. All that mattered at that point was digging him out alive. 

He broke out in a sweat and could no longer keep his grip from going slick against the metallic debris. 

“Hang in there,” John hissed between gritted teeth, lifting and tossing brick after brick from the pile. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and curdled in the pit of his gut. 

The other workers were panicking around him, darting about anxiously. One of his men came to his side and began clearing out some of the mess with a shovel.

Shouting over his shoulder, John demanded another worker to call an ambulance. He paused for a moment before nodding with vigor and sprinting to the phone in the trailer. Kaz let out a muffled whimper, just barely audible above the chaos around him.

“C-can’t-“

“Damn it, Kaz!”

From between the debris, John could see the side of his face. His aviators had been smashed to bits and his cheek was a bloody mess. No longer was there the same cocky smile from just minutes (Hours? Millennia?) ago. Something about it was so deeply unsettling, but John wasn’t able to quite place it.

“Hurts-“

“Just hang on.”

“Boss! The paramedics are on their way. They said to keep Miller still,” one of his men piped up. “The asshole on the crane just fuckin’ vanished. Nobody can find him anywhere!”

“Great,” John growled. He didn’t move an inch from Kaz- who was rapidly fading out of consciousness. Shock had most likely set in. Unfortunately, he had no other choice than to just wait. There was no way he could lift that pipe on his own.

His strength had really failed him.

After a few agonizingly slow minutes had passed, two fire trucks and an ambulance arrived.

A few firemen poured out from their trucks and motioned for John to move out of the way. It was a job for professionals, not one for him. Together, they put their own strength together and heaved the pipe just barely off of Kaz’s crumpled body.

John rushed forward just to be shooed away again. All he could do was stand back and breathe, watching as they loaded Kaz onto a stretcher. The arm from before dangled off the side as if connected to his elbow by a loose thread. It made him gag, but he refused to allow himself to look away.

His working eye drifted over to the mangled mass where his leg was supposed to be, and then to his unconscious face.

\- - -  
It wasn’t until 7:30 or so when Adam returned home. 

He shrugged off his coat and draped it over one of the hooks on the coatrack. The tinny noise of the radio in the kitchen filled the air with that weird “Synthpop” stuff John was so fond of.

Perhaps he was just a bit old-fashioned, but all those synthesizers and sequencers weren’t really his thing. Adam preferred the stylings of Hank Williams and Johnny Cash. Maybe even a little Bill Monroe if he was feeling particularly feisty.

Still, he recognized the song on the radio from something out of John’s sizable LP collection. Maybe it was the one with the painting of the flowers on it? He’d been so excited about it the year before and listened to it almost incessantly. 

To Adam, it all sort of sounded the same. It made him happy to see John get all sorts of giddy about it, though.

He stepped over to the radio and turned up the volume, wishing to himself that John was home to hear it. It was a strangely bouncy song, and he found himself singing along- albeit quite bashfully.

“Oh, o-our love is like the earth,” he sang, his voice cracking a bit on the higher notes. “The sun, the trees, and the birth.”

If John had been home at that very moment, would he smile as wide as Adam did? He couldn’t help but wonder. His own voice was nothing special, but maybe they’d sound a bit nicer together.

“Oh, our love is like the-“

His personal concert was cut short by a loud knock at the door. Sighing, he made his way back to the entryway and peeked through the peephole.

A blonde woman and two young boys stood in his view: Eva and her brats.

He contemplated just ignoring her and slinking away into his and John’s room until she left, but there was no way she hadn’t heard him singing. Adam had dug his own grave.

He ran a hand through his hair and slowly opened the door.

“Hello, Eva.”

“Adam.”

“He’s at work right now.”

Her sour expression offset her normally beautiful face. She gestured to the two boys on either side of her and let out a frustrated sigh. 

“I called him last night saying I’d need him to keep an eye on David and Eli for this weekend,” she explained, pausing to rub at her temple. “I’m going out of town and the boys need some time with their dad anyway.”

“He’s at work right now, though.”

“And?”

There was really no saving Adam from that horribly awkward situation. He had no choice but to give in and end his half-assed charade.

Eli, the blonde twin, looked Adam up and down before sneering. His brother, David, glanced meekly to the side.

Oh, how he hated Eli.

“I suppose I can keep an eye on them until he gets home,” Adam said through gritted teeth, focusing every last bit of his strength into not punting the little shit down the hallway.

“You’re a lifesaver,” Eva replied, shoving the boys’ overnight bags into his hands. “Tell John I said hi, won’t you? He’s late on his alimony payment again.”

“Of course.”

Adam chuckled bitterly and dropped the bags onto the couch. The boys stood with their mother as she leaned down to give them both a kiss on the cheek. David smiled and clutched his sleeping bag tight whereas his brother rolled his eyes in response, fussing impatiently.

“I’ll be back to pick them up on Monday morning,” she went on. “You two be good for Uncle Adam, okay? I’m sure Dad has all sorts of fun stuff planned out for this weekend.”

“’Kay, mom,” the twins said in unison. Eli shoved past Adam and plopped on the ground in front of the television while David needed a little push from his mother before stepping into the apartment.

She flashed him a little smile before turning on her heel to leave. John really couldn’t get home soon enough.


End file.
